PHILIPSBURG:--- St. Maarten’s healthcare and social insurance system is on life support, gasping under the weight of a predictable and preventable crisis. For nearly a decade, a chorus of warnings from financial watchdogs, internal experts, and supervisory boards has been met with a deafening silence from successive governments. This is not a story of an unforeseen disaster; it is a chronicle of gross negligence, political inaction, and a staggering betrayal of public trust.
The alarm bells have been ringing since at least 2015. Dr. Michel Petit, then-chairman of the USZV Supervisory Board, resigned in 2016, citing "overreaching and undue influence" from government officials and warning of the mismanagement of pension and healthcare funds. He filed formal complaints, a desperate attempt to shield the system from the very entities meant to protect it. His warnings were dismissed, a prelude to a pattern of denial that would become government policy.
Years later, SZV Director Glen Carty laid out the impending catastrophe in stark, undeniable terms. He presented data showing the healthcare system was hemorrhaging money at a rate of $35 million per year. He projected that if the government continued its path of willful ignorance, SZV would be insolvent within six to seven years. Today, that doomsday clock is perilously close to midnight, and the government’s response has been nothing short of a dereliction of duty.
The numbers paint a damning picture of this fiasco. The cumulative deficit in the healthcare funds has ballooned to an estimated 500 million guilders. This gaping financial wound is being temporarily patched with surpluses from the old-age pension (AOV) fund—a reckless strategy of robbing retirees to pay for today's inexcusable shortfalls. The International Monetary Fund has already predicted the inevitable outcome: the reserves will be completely depleted by 2029.
This crisis is compounded by a demographic reality that any competent administration should have foreseen. The average age of an SZV beneficiary has climbed from 38 in 2014 to 45 in 2022. It costs nearly four times as much to insure a person over 60 as it does someone younger. Instead of planning for this predictable shift, the government watched as the financial pressures mounted, choosing to do nothing.
Perhaps the most galling aspect of this debacle is the government's own hypocrisy. While businesses are rightly criticized for non-compliance, the government itself stands as one of SZV's largest debtors, owing the system a jaw-dropping $100 million. It is an act of breathtaking audacity to demand accountability from citizens while simultaneously failing to honor its own massive financial obligations to the very system it has driven into the ground.
The contrast with neighboring Curacao, where legislation mandates government support for its social insurance system, only highlights the deliberate nature of St. Maarten's policy failure. Here, SZV was left to fend for itself, abandoned by the very leaders sworn to uphold the people's welfare. The time for studies and political posturing is over. The warnings were ignored, the data was dismissed, and the window for easy solutions has closed. The consequences of this decade-long negligence are now upon us, threatening the health of our elderly, the security of our workers, and the stability of our nation. This is a crisis born not of circumstance, but of choice—the choice of successive governments to turn a blind eye. Accountability is not just a political buzzword; it is a moral imperative. Immediate, decisive action is the only path forward, and the people of St. Maarten must demand nothing less.